As International Youth Day approaches, Chris was reflecting on his experiences working with young people.
The idea behind having an International Youth Day is to raise awareness and amplify the message of how intergenerational connections need to be strengthened and sustainable for growth in the future.
It’s great to raise awareness of any kind of barrier that young people may experience, to enable us to break down these barriers. For example, when we have a movement of young people, with certain views and opinions, we tag them with Generation Z, Millennials or Gen Alpha categories, when in fact they’re each an individual person.
It’s just someone’s viewpoint through a slightly different lens and International Youth Day is about bringing that viewpoint to the forefront and dispelling any kind of ageism thing that it’s this or that generation. All the generational tagline shows is that their view of the world isn’t understood. Instead, we should be asking; ‘What’s your opinion? Can we hear more? Can we learn more?’
Any barriers, that the young person feels that the previous generation(s) have put in place, whether they be health, human rights, development etc., need to be challenged.
For me, there’s a phrase that was said years ago, ‘Tradition is something handed down by dead people’, which I love because when you really question it, those people aren’t here. We often keep these traditions going without asking ourselves, does it still work? Does this tradition still fit?
I think for me, that’s why International Youth Day is so important, as it can really support bringing these traditions into the limelight to be re-examined and questioned to see if they’re still relevant.
It’s about listening through a completely different set of ears to the challenges that young people are facing and what views of the world they have right now.
I feel lucky that I’ve had the chance to work in education with many amazing young people. From primary school children aged five and upwards, right through to university age young people. I worked with them for 13 to 14 years, day in, day out.
I’d visit schools to chat to the young people about their day and support them with their personal development programmes. Whilst I was there mentoring and coaching, I absolutely loved that I was helping them to grasp a hold of their education. I never lost sight of asking the question, “What is your world like and what is your challenge?” I spent time learning their challenge and I never once assumed that I knew what it was. It didn’t matter what age they were, asking that question always gave me an insight into their world.
Once I heard their answers, I’d then chat with them about how we could jointly pull something together to help them progress and learn from my experiences as a past Olympian. In Olympic sport everything’s about legacy and learning from that legacy, to build the future***.
I believe if we’re not frightened of the answers, we’ll ask the questions to support developing these young people. And that’s where I think International Youth Day can really shift the needle slightly.
*** When a city bids for the Olympics, they’re in rounds. In the first round, 12 cities can bid around the world to host an Olympics, but it’s done at least eight years before they’re due to take place. This means you’re bidding for two maybe three Olympics ahead.
For each round of bidding, you must create something with your city to prove that you’re committed, but then you might lose out in round two of bidding. However, the idea is the Olympics leaves a legacy with those cities who’ve lost the bidding but they’ve created a stadium, hosted a world student games, or done something that really says that they’re serious about hosting an Olympics. This Olympic legacy is about passing something sustainable down to the next generation and not just about now.